Trump
Is Killing Record Amounts of Civilians In The
Middle East
It turns out Trump’s first disastrous raid in
Yemen — an exercise in boosting his strongman
image by green lighting a raid that Obama wasn’t
“kickass” enough to authorize for reasons that
are now deadly apparent — was only the start of
a bloody campaign that looks a hell of a like
the start of war with Iran.
By Mike
Redmond
March
30, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- In the days leading up to the 2016 election,
I became aware of a chilling rationale that
powered support for Donald Trump among active
military members that went way beyond the old
chestnut that Republicans quickly lose their
religion on deficits when it comes to defense
spending. And Donald Trump has already
demonstrated that he’ll yank meals away from
senior citizens if it’ll buy a few more bullets.
“Sorry, Grandpa, we’ve got brown people to kill.
Have you tried eating a shoe?”
And while I absolutely understand the instinct
to protect one’s job and put food on the table,
which voting Republican is almost guaranteed to
do if you’re in the military, where I start to
become concerned is when I hear things like,
“Donald Trump is finally going to let us kick
some ass.” Which is also the same mentality that
earned Trump an
endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police.
Essentially, anything goes. It’s an idea that
stretches back to the aftermath of the Vietnam
War when a myth was deliberately injected into
our national lexicon that America lost that
endeavor because we had “one
hand tied behind our back.”
Except anyone with even a cursory knowledge of
Vietnam knows that orders to commit horrifying
and unconscionable acts were carried out pretty
easily.
But before I paint with too broad of a brush,
the military and police are obviously not a
giant monolith where everyone votes and thinks
in lockstep. I know there are men and women in
uniform who fully appreciate the violence that’s
about to be unleashed under the questionable
leadership of a narcissistic manic who openly
advocated
committing war crimes
and faced zero repercussions for it. And in the
coming days, I have no doubts that those men and
women will be the heroes who come forward to
tell us how that violence happened and why it
shouldn’t be ignored.
Which brings us to Trump’s current meddling in
the Middle East that’s being overshadowed by
whatever the hell Devin Nunes is trying to pull
and the
spectacular failure of the American Health Care
Act. It turns
out Trump’s first disastrous raid in Yemen — an
exercise in boosting his strongman image by
greenlighting a raid that Obama wasn’t “kickass”
enough to authorize for reasons that are now
deadly apparent — was only the start of a bloody
campaign that looks a hell of a like
the start of war with Iran.
Even more alarming, reports from the ground in
Yemen, Mosul, and Syria all share a consistent
theme that should give anyone with an
understanding of how the military operates
significant pause: The rules of engagement are
being relaxed. From
The New York Times
(emphasis mine):
The
American-led military coalition in Iraq said
Friday that it was investigating reports
that scores of civilians — perhaps as many
as 200, residents said — had been killed in
recent American airstrikes in Mosul, the
northern Iraqi city at the center of an
offensive to drive out the Islamic State.
If confirmed,
the series of airstrikes would rank among
the highest civilian death tolls in an
American air mission since the United States
went to war in Iraq in 2003. And the reports
of civilian deaths in Mosul came immediately
after
two recent incidents in Syria,
where the coalition is also battling the
Islamic State from the air, in which
activists and local residents said dozens of
civilians had been killed.
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Taken together, the surge of reported
civilian deaths raised questions about
whether once-strict rules of engagement
meant to minimize civilian casualties were
being relaxed under the Trump
administration, which has vowed to fight the
Islamic State more aggressively.
Naturally, the Pentagon denies that the rules of
engagement have been changed. However, in the
same breath it also says that “minor
adjustments”
have been made to “speed up the process of
providing air power” i.e. drone strike the shit
out of anything and everything without getting
too bogged down in details like maybe not
killing a bunch of civilians in record numbers.
Also, according to The Daily Beast, in
a report about another strike in Syria
last week that possibly killed as many as 50
civilians and would’ve left 200 dead had a
religious lesson not gone past schedule, “since
December the authority to approve airstrikes has
been relegated to the
lowest appropriate level.”
The reaction you’re looking for is Jesus
Christ.
Of course, this raises questions about Secretary
of Defense James Mattis, who has the distinct
honor of being one of the few cabinet appointees
not tainted by Russia, which is how low the bar
is right now. While the conventional wisdom at
the time of his appointment was that Mattis is a
well-read, data driven officer who would keep
Trump in line, specifically in regards to NATO,
there were far too few concerns about his actual
views on
civilian casualties.
In light of recent events, it’s probably safe to
say those views hover somewhere between, “What
are ya gonna do?” and “Eh, fuck ‘em.” Which is
exactly how we ended up with ISIS and are
rocketing towards making that mistake all over
again because apparently the Muslim ban wasn’t a
big enough recruitment tool.
As we speak, American troops are slowly being
dragged into a
ground war in Syria
— and if you’ve been paying attention, that’s on
top of the other ground war slowly
being rolled out in Yemen — and Senator Chris
Murphy (D-CT) warns that all of the pieces are
in place to repeat Iraq all over again. Or more
specifically not in place because our president
isn’t big on planning.
This past Thursday, I joined other members
of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations
Committee for lunch with Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson. I was glad that Tillerson was
willing to open the doors of the State
Department to a bipartisan group of
senators, and our discussion was honest and
frank. In the meeting, Tillerson showed
admirable candor in admitting that the
military strategy was far ahead of the
diplomatic strategy in Syria.
But
this was actually a dramatic understatement.
Unless a secret plan exists that Trump is
keeping from U.S. senators and his own
Secretary of State, there is absolutely no
plan for who controls post-ISIS Raqqa, or
post-Assad Syria.
Murphy
continues:
Without a political plan for the future of
Raqqa, a military plan is practically
useless. Yes, getting ISIS out of Raqqa is a
victory in and of itself, but if we set into
motion a series of events that simply
prolongs the broader conflict, ISIS will
easily pick up the pieces and use the
ongoing turmoil to regroup and reemerge. We
should have learned in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Libya that a military victory without a plan
for what comes next is really not a victory
at all. But unbelievably, we seem on the
verge of making this mistake again, because
of (understandable) enthusiasm for taking
the fight to a vicious enemy.
To
anyone concerned about human life, from the
soldiers who are about to fed into another meat
grinder, to innocent civilians who are becoming
more and more of an afterthought, to the deadly
consequences of ISIS growing in numbers, this is
goddamn alarming information. Unfortunately, for
Trump voters, this is him actually delivering on
a campaign promise by not being some “egghead
pussy” who worries about the ramifications of
ruthlessly bombing the hell out of innocent
people who practice a religion that barely
registers as a threat to American lives. You’re
more likely to get struck by lightning than die
in a terrorist attack, but that doesn’t come
with an air of religious superiority and good
old fashioned white supremacy, so I’m an idiot
for even trying. Keep kicking ass, everybody.
Mike Redmond spent a decade writing about Kim
Kardashian for a living. This is his penance.
Follow him on
Twitter.
This
article was first published at
The Daily Banter
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
